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For Obama, Less is More on Health Care

Sometime in the late spring or early summer of 1993, those of us responsible for "message" in the Clinton White House (where I served as Press Secretary) convened a meeting of seasoned Washington hands to help us rethink communications strategy. While the new president was in so many ways an effective communicator, something wasn't working. We had lost control of the dialogue on any number of issues.

Tony Coelho, the politically astute former California Congressman, was among those who showed up to help. "I just flew into National Airport," he said, when he arrived. "All the televisions along the concourse were on, and the president was speaking. But no one—no one—stopped to hear what he was saying."

President Clinton had become ubiquitous. In any given week, he seemed to appear on television dozens of times, talking about issues from health care to Haiti; signing bills, executives orders, even autographs; meeting with opinion leaders and members of Congress; opining in his rather-too-short running shorts. By saying everything, it turned out, the president often ended up saying nothing. The antidote, of course, was to limit the president's appearances, to say less so as to effect the debate more. Picking our shots more carefully didn't solve all our problems, but it gave the president more credibility— and more power.President Obama finds himself in a similar predicament. In fact, the White House message machine may have officially jumped the shark yesterday with the announcement that the president would appear on five public affairs shows this coming Sunday. It's a record. No president has ever attempted a similar road block, and there's good reason: more is not necessarily more effective.

In some ways, President Obama has been a victim of his own success. Particularly on domestic issues, he has been an exponentially more effective salesman for his own initiatives than any ally or other member of his administration. So whether the issue is the economy or health care, Iraq or immigration, Obama is the guy who goes out to close the deal. But it's an unsustainable model, as the recent months have made clear.

Last week's health care speech before a joint session of Congress was a case in point. It was a terrific speech, one of the best of Obama's presidency. But it didn't achieve what the White House had hoped. Don't get me wrong: it got a massive amount of coverage. In fact, according to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, health care was last week's most covered story, filling 32 percent of the "newshole." And President Obama dominated the story. But the second biggest newsmaker was Joe Wilson, the formerly anonymous South Carolina congressman who shouted "You lie!" during the president's speech. The take away was the jarring incident—is Wilson a rude, right-wing extremist or a populist hero? Should the House take disciplinary action or let it go?— and not the details of the president's plan. And poll numbers measuring public support for it did not really move.

In some ways, such incidents are beyond a president's control. But because Obama has been such a singular figure in the health care debate, he has become the symbol of all that's right for those who support reform, and all that's wrong for those who don't. It's become personal. And that has energized the opposition in town halls over the course of the summer, on the Mall this weekend, and on the floor of the House last week.

Adding injury to insult, Wilson's outburst has inserted questions about whether the president's plan would provide benefits for illegal immigrants into an already overstuffed and contentious debate. Talk about unintended consequences.

It's time for the White House to rethink its All-Obama, All-the-Time approach. His omnipresence has not only helped polarize an already polarized process, it has diminished the president's effectiveness. It's time to dial it back. Sometimes less really is more.